I had been so wrong.

It turns out that a life with nothing in it to lose is not a safe life.

It is just an empty one.

And it turns out that the thing I had been protecting myself from, the vulnerability of loving someone whose wellbeing matters more than your own, is not a danger to be avoided but the entire point, the one thing that makes a life worth the trouble of living it.

Maya taught me that, without a word, by needing me, and by letting me need her back.

There was only Maya, asleep now against my shoulder, and the quiet unshakeable warmth of a home built on a love that no diagnosis could ever diminish and no passage of time could ever break.